


Party of Two

by swooning



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-07
Updated: 2015-04-07
Packaged: 2018-03-21 19:43:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3703317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swooning/pseuds/swooning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A flash fic for the "First Kiss" blog hop. Two strangers meet and kiss for the first time on camera.</p><p>Warnings: distracted horny lesbian, magnetically attractive bisexual, party scenes, tapenade, engineers, nerds. And, of course, two girls kissing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Party of Two

The stranger didn’t belong at the party.

Not because she was out of place or awkward, the way Jamie always felt at these things when she didn’t know all the people. No,  _she_  had walked in like she owned the place, right from the very start.

The woman didn’t belong, because she was out of this crowd’s league. Categorically and unmistakably. It wasn’t even about objective hotness, although there was a certain amount of that. It was attitude, the kind of visible confidence and  _joi de vivre_  it was almost impossible to fake. The woman gleamed with it, a quality more distinctive than her height, her devastating black motorcycle boots, or the swing of glossy dark hair that periodically obscured her silky-sharp profile. She was an otherwordly visitor, descending gently to the planet of the nerds to bestow the passing grace of her fleeting presence before disappearing back to whatever blessed place she’d come from. Which was apparently an energy company downtown, where she was employed as some sort of engineer.

Or possibly the strange woman was a predator, enjoying the freedom one only knew at the very top of the food chain. Maybe she would make a choice before the evening was through, culling one weak but very lucky sheep from the flock and making a meal of it.  _Snap, snap!_  For now she seemed content to make a circuit of the room, moving from group to group like King Henry making the rounds before the battle of Agincourt.  _A little touch of hot engineer in the night._

Metaphors. She was getting too bogged down in metaphors again. Jamie dragged her eyes away from the stranger, forcing herself to attend to what Linda was saying.

“And then he keyed the side of this poor woman’s car. I mean, that was just tacky. It would’ve been tacky even if he hadn’t cheated on Maureen in the first place. But he acted like she’s the one who went off script.”

“Um. Yeah.”  _Crap_. She’d zoned out and lost the thread of the conversation entirely. Not the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last, but she’d promised herself she’d at least try to be social this time.  _Who the hell is she even talking about_?

Linda tilted her head, zeroing in on Jamie. “Are you okay?”

“I’m great. So…he keyed Maureen’s car, really?”

Linda sighed over the nearly-empty bowl of hummus in front of her. “No, he keyed the car of the girl she went on one unsuccessful date with after he left. I’ve got to find more dip. The night is way too young to be running out.” She headed for the kitchen, bowl in hand and Jamie at her heels.

“You could do the crock pot queso thing. Everybody always eats that. Even the people who think they’re too sophisticated.”

“I may resort to it if there’s nothing else. I’ll pretend it’s ironic, of course. People have brought stuff, though, so it may not come to that.”

There was more room in the kitchen, small as it was compared to Linda’s living room. More air, somehow, without the overwhelming presence of the strange predator-angel. Jamie’s heart stopped skipping beats, her teeth ceased their anxious grinding. She wished herself back in the living room, even so.

“So what do you think of her? I saw you staring.” Linda was leaning into the fridge, unable to see the hot blush that spread over Jamie’s cheeks.

“Of…who? I was—I wasn’t staring at anybody.” And she certainly hadn’t been undressing anybody with her eyes. Much less undressing herself mentally, before throwing herself—again, only in her mind, because it was not  _that_ kind of party—at anybody’s elegantly biker-booted feet.

“Honey, you were all but salivating. I don’t blame you. She’s pretty spectacular and I’m not even into girls. Ooh, tapenade! I wonder whose this is. Is it  _really_  tapenade, do you think, or did somebody just re-use a container?”

“It’s tapenade,” volunteered a voice from the doorway. “I brought some pita chips for it, too. Don’t know where those got off to.”

Jamie knew what she would see, even before she turned around. There was not nearly enough air to sustain life and thought when  _she_  was in this vanishingly tiny kitchen. Not when her voice was apparently some intoxicating combination of southern belle and porn star. But of course it was her. Who else could it be? Who else would make tapenade sound like a kinky sex act?

Linda apparently had no trouble breathing, thinking, or maintaining motor control in the presence of this person. “Hey, Maureen. Thanks. I think the chips are already out there somewhere. Jamie, this is Maureen, of the douchebag ex-boyfriend. Maureen, Jamie.”

There was nothing for it but to turn around. Jamie forced herself to do it, to face the force of nature head-on, glossy raven’s-wing hair and all. God, she was close. And getting closer, holding out a hand to shake. Jamie forced out some words, hoping they were in some way coherent. “Oh! Hi. Hello. I’m Jamie. I heard about the car. So. Yes. Douchebag.  _Douchebag, indeed_.”

Maureen smiled, and Jamie realized her eyes were intensely green and absolutely hypnotic. The mesmerizing effect soothed some of the sting of knowing she’d just said something colossally weird. At least she hadn’t told her she smelled like an exotic spice garden, or mentioned that her hand was the precise temperature of instant physical attraction, even though both of those things were true.

“He was. Though I’ve heard I ought to be flattered.”

Linda scooted between them on her way back to the living room, carrying the tapenade in the hastily rinsed hummus bowl. “You haven’t heard that from me.”

“Flattered?” Jamie thought she must have missed something.

Maureen rolled her eyes and shook her head. “I know. Ridiculous, right? Because I drove him crazy, apparently. He was so distraught that he couldn’t help himself.”

“Who the fuck told you that?”

Her smiled deepened. And then, dimples. Because of course she had dimples. “Would you believe…my grandmother?”

Jamie nodded. “Yes. That sounds like a grandmother thing. For a certain value of grandmother.”

 _You just said a weird thing. And you continue to lack the ability to travel back in time five seconds and un-say it. Fuck_.

Maureen’s mouth opened, a startled shape with no sound. Then, like magic, like a creature from a lonely academic’s fever dream, she offered an equation. “The value of this particular grandmother is something like the square root of a conservative politician father, over a mother whose people more or less owned the town they lived in, times eighty years spent mostly in South Carolina.”

“I want to fondle every word you just said.” She also no longer cared what kind of party it was. If this astonishing girl kept talking, and chuckling the way she was, and having those eyes, there was simply no telling how long Jamie could resist flinging herself Maureen-ward.

“Now,  _that_ —“

“Hey, ladies!” Linda’s brother Doug crept into the kitchen, staring down at his iPad. He was recording. Experiencing the party through the medium of video, he called it. Linda called it “autocockblocking for posterity.” But he’d been a fixture at her parties since college, and he’d recorded some fairly interesting moments. Jamie had to wonder how many more he’d prevented.

“Doug. Have you met Maureen?”

“I have. I work with her, I see her every day. I introduced her to Linda. Hey, Maureen. Enjoying the party? Got any thoughts you want to preserve for the ages?”

Maureen put a finger to her chin as though seriously pondering the question. “Hmm.  _Hmm_. Well, the thing is, Doug, you interrupted something really important. No, no, it’s cool. Keep rolling.”

“He always keeps rolling.” Jamie was about to offer him money to disappear, when Maureen leaned closer to her and put that same finger under Jamie’s chin. She tipped it up a few degrees, forming a suggestive slope between their faces, and making Jamie’s heart pound in the process.  _Oh, what’s going on here? How did we get here? Where the hell is this?_

“You see,” Maureen went on, ostensibly addressing Doug even as she directed her gaze at Jamie, “I was just discussing flattery with Jamie. And since we’d already had an example of something neither of us found flattering, I wanted to share something that I  _did_  find flattering. Very much so. If that’s okay with you, Jamie?”

She nodded, unable to speak, barely able to remain conscious for the rush of giddy excitement. Maureen’s smile turned wicked and smug as she leaned in close, closer, curving her hand around Jamie’s jaw and cheek. When her lips— _lips_!—were almost touching Jamie’s ear, she whispered and let her breath bridge the final gap.

“You. Watching me earlier, looking like you were ready to either take a bite out of me, or ask me to take one out of you.  _That_  was flattering. That made my fucking night.”

Jamie’s eyes had closed at “bite,” her world reduced to words, touch, spicy-sweet perfume and a longing so intense she wanted to beg Maureen to ease the ache.  _I’m the sheep, I’m the lucky sheep_ , was all she could think. So she missed seeing Maureen’s face as she retreated kiss by kiss, pressing her lips along Jamie’s cheekbone, nose, and finally, to her mouth.

The whole thing would have lasted only a few hot breaths, if Jamie had been able to breathe. After Maureen’s perfect lips finished their woefully short, feather-light stay on hers, she had to concentrate to open her eyes, re-orienting herself to the reality of Linda’s perfectly ordinary kitchen. The counter full of crumpled chip bags and empty beer bottles, Doug standing there with his iPad, apparently still recording…and Maureen, touching the pad of one thumb to her lower lip and wearing a startled expression. As if she were the one caught unawares by the whole thing, as if she were the one ready to bite or be bitten, or perhaps a little of both.

Neither of them belonged at the party. But neither of them regretted attending.

 

_Original fiction by Delphine Dryden. All rights reserved. Please do not reprint without permission._


End file.
